


a universe that includes you

by recarmloss



Category: DragonFable
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 11:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10830024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recarmloss/pseuds/recarmloss
Summary: There's more to a home than a soft bed and fresh bread each morning.





	a universe that includes you

**Author's Note:**

> I recently got back into DragonFable and played both the Tomix Saga and the Caitiff Saga within a day of each other and I am emotionally wrecked. And there's so much awesome stuff about the Tomix Saga already that I just had to give the Caitiff Saga some love.

**i.**

Everything about Falconreach is overwhelming. Only a few weeks ago there’d been refugees streaming to Oaklore, fleeing from seemingly endless hordes of fire monsters, but now there’s barely any trace of that destruction anywhere. A few areas scattered with ashes, a lingering haze to the air, perhaps, but that’s it.

“Hey, hero,” a voice says, all smiles and sunshine. “New to Falconreach?”

She turns to see a blonde woman leaning against the edge of a building, a tray of bread in her hands. “Must be,” the woman continues. “You’ve got that wide-eyed look of wonder on your face. You are new, right?”

She finds her voice, “Uh, yes. Yeah, I just got here from Oaklore Keep.”

“Knew it!” The woman grins. “Have a place to stay yet?”

“Well. No, but-“

“Great!” The woman tilts her head, gestures at the building she’s leaning on. “My name’s Serenity, and I run this inn right here.”

Serenity looks her up and down, eyes lingering on the staff she keeps on her back. “Tell you what. Most of the usual adventurers are off hunting down the last of the fire monsters so there’s a bit of a shortage of people who can help me with my attic problem.”

“Attic problem?”

“Yeah. It’s haunted, or something. Customers keep complaining about spirits in the attic, wailing at night, the whole experience.” Serenity smiles. “How about we make a deal? You help me with the ghosts, and I give you free accommodation for at least the week. A little something to help you get started in town.”

She sighs in relief, glad that she at least won’t have to worry about accommodation for the time being. “I think I can handle a couple of ghosts.”

Serenity’s grin broadens until it could rival the sun. She sets down the bread tray and extends her hand. “Then it’s settled! Welcome to Falconreach!”

 

**ii.**

Her parents work at a farm a good hour or two east of Oaklore. And for a lot of her childhood, so did she: she remembers the strong sun overhead as she picked juicy tomatoes off the vines, pulled beets and potatoes from the soft rich earth. 

There’s a comfort in dumping armfuls of fruits and vegetables into wicker baskets and hauling the heavy fresh harvest into the barns each year. It’s one she hasn’t felt in a while, but there’s something similar now, when she pulls herself through the inn doors and sees Serenity there, always, the smell of fresh bread in the air.

It is home, perhaps. The comfort of home.

 

**iii.**

She likes helping out with the little chores. At least once a month she helps clean out the attic, and at least once a month she helps “clean out” the attic. When the Yaga moves into the little gingerbread house downtown and she learns to cook, she helps out in the inn kitchens. At times, she goes out and helps pick up some deliveries from Swordhaven and Battleon, escorts caravans and merchants back to the inn so Serenity can pick up her supplies.  
 ****

This time, she’s helping Serenity nail up a nice little cork board in the foyer out by the front of the inn.

“What’s this for?” she asks, holding the board up higher so Serenity can fix it to the wood.

“Just a little odd jobs board,” Serenity answers. She tilts her head to a small stack of papers she set down by her side. “There’s been more and more little newbies starting out their adventuring career, and I figure they could use a bit of a boost to help them start off. You know, clearing out some sneevil forts and all that.”

“Sounds helpful.”

“Yep! Gives them some experience, gives them an opportunity to earn some gold to pay for accommodations. It looks bad for business to turn people out, and anyway, that’s just mean.”

She frowns, dropping her gaze to the floor when she remembers how she’s never paid for a night’s stay in her life. “I could start paying,” she says. “You’ve let me stay for years, I should at least-“

“Nuh uh, let’s consider this a hero’s discount.” Serenity smiles as she wags a finger. “You’ve saved Falconreach more times than I can count. And I know it’s not much compared to everything you do, but I want to repay you. A bed and a couple of meals each day is the least that I can do.”

“But-“

“Nope, not having it.” Serenity cheerfully turns back to her work, picking up a flier and fixing it to the cork board. “Really, you help me out at the inn so much that I really should be doing more for you. I should probably be paying you a salary-“

“It’s really nothing!” She says quickly, cheeks beginning to turn pink. “I just- I want to help. It’s nice.”

“And that’s why you’re such a good hero.” There’s finality in Serenity’s voice, but she feels the need to protest even so.

“I’m not.”

“You are,” says Serenity, and all that’s in her voice is faith.

 

**iv.**

“We can rebuild,” Serenity says.

Serenity looks down at the crumbled stone and wood, but she looks up. Bones still glitter in the sea beyond, the sky is still shattered above.

The world looks broken, from where she’s standing.

A warm hand curls around her wrist.

“We can rebuild,” Serenity says again. “This isn’t the end.”

 

**v.**

All she knows is cold.

All she has ever known is cold.

No. That’s not true. But it feels like it.

It feels like the only constant in her life is the ice, the chill that pierces through her veins and winds deep and sharp around her bones. Day cycles into night, each season into the next, and the years pass by, glacial in their pace, until time has no meaning anymore.

She is so cold. Even her memories of warmth—soft blankets and sunlit hair and constant smiles—are fading, melting, gone.

 

**vi.**

It’s a homecoming in every sense of the word.

Nostalgia hits her like a rush of blood to the head, a strange mix of grief and wonder that bubbles up her throat, begging to be expressed in words that she can’t yet find. Falconreach has grown exactly as she has not over these many years. 

There is the guardian tower in the distance, a beacon of stone and hope. Down to the south is the river that burbles through Falconreach, dainty ripples appearing on the surface wherever the iridescent pixies dance across the waters. The distant sounds of a menagerie in the distance—Aria’s shop, it must be. Ash, scruff on his chin and a sword of light at his side, standing before a building that towers into the sky, surrounded by an air of warmth and comfort.

Her reminiscence is cut short before it can truly begin, as a warm scaly body slams into her torso, sends her toppling down into the grass. Joy, an excited chittering of her name, and suddenly that’s all she can focus on. Reunion tastes every bit as sweet as she hoped it would.

But later, when she thinks she’s cried out all her happy tears, it appears that life is there to prove her wrong yet again.

“Hey hero,” a familiar voice says. “Welcome to Falconreach.”

The warm evening air settles around her, calm and steady. “Think you can help me with a little ghost problem? I might still have your room for you if you do.”

She looks up, meets sea-green eyes. Her voice is a crooked and wavering as her smile as she says, “I think I can handle a couple of ghosts.”

 

**vii.**

She cries when Serenity dies.

She cries, and shouts into the starry void, “Why her too?” as if the world would actually answer.

 

**viii.**

Of course it doesn’t.

 

**ix.**

Caitiff drifts into view for the first time and her heart fills with hope so fiercely that she fears it may burst.

It vanishes, of course, in an instant. What has the course of her life done to suggest any other outcome? Caitiff is not Serenity, not anymore. The eyes of the axe glow sickly red and the voice- no, voice _s_ , the multitude of them, none resemble Serenity’s, not in the slightest. 

Caitiff is grotesque. An abomination. A blight on this world. To think that any part of Serenity was used in its creation makes her want to gag.

She’ll kill Valtrith for this, she’ll obliterate every piece of him from this world. He said that Serenity’s soul was destroyed, utterly, completely, but it can’t be, there must be something left. There _must_ be.

**hero͝**

Serenity’s neck dangles as Caitiff moves, like a twine rope frayed to the point of snapping. Eyes milky, clouded over in death, unseeing. It hurts to look at what remains of her.

**yo͟u cąn͠no̢t͡ w̷in ag̵ai͢ns̵t ͘the̵ da͞rkn̸e͢s̨s**

She clutches her staff so tightly that she thinks the rod will carve a space for itself into her palms. 

“Just try me,” she snarls, and leaps.

 

**x.**

Falconreach burns. 

Again.

Her dragon is gone, the other half of her soul if ever there was one, and every part of her is unraveling. She’s wrung out, exhausted but with no way to rest because all of Lore is fading, drowning in the darkness.

Her vision wavers, and briefly time loses her again. She sees Drakonnan hurling fireballs towards town, and then liquid dragonfire rains down on the roofs, the laughter of imps replaces the crackling flames engulfing Falconreach.

Someone calls her name. She shakes her head, blinks twice, and she’s jerked back to the present. A thin dusting of dark snow lies on her shoulders and she brushes it off before turning her attention back to the situation at hand.

Reality isn’t anymore appealing than her fractured memories. “Could’ve picked a better memory,” she mutters to herself.

Could’ve been early mornings on the farm, breezy summers spent racing through waving golden stalks taller than she was. Could’ve been afternoons giggling in Oaklore’s infirmary, laughing off sprained ankles with the other apprentice adventurers. Could’ve been late nights at Falconreach’s inn, trudging down from the attic to see a familiar pair of green eyes, crinkled up in a smile, a small plate from that evening’s dinner kept warm, just for her.

Could’ve been any memory of home.

It’s not. And she’ll just have to make do. 

Back to the front. Things aren’t over yet.

 

**xi.**

She’s so angry that she could scream.

Serenity whimpers in pain.

It’s not Serenity. She takes a deep breath, drowning out the pleading voice asking, “Why didn’t you save me?”

It’s not anything she hasn’t asked herself. That’s the only thought that keeps the tears at bay, that turns the anguish into rage. If Caitiff thinks that it can pull this on her, it’s wrong. Caitiff is wrong.

She holds onto it, tight as she can, as the tide of undead slow, and slow, and stop.

She holds onto it, tight as she can, as her dragon falls out of the sky, streaking towards the earth like a falling dark star.

She holds onto it, tight as she can, as Caitiff reappears.

**th͞e ͘d͝arkn̕e̛ss̵ h̶aş won̕** , it says.

And it speaks in _Serenity’s voice,_ it _uses_ her body _,_ it _desecrates_ her dearest friend _,_ it _dares._

Serenity believed in her. Always, to the end. She holds onto this, tight as she can.

“NO IT HASN’T.”

 

**xii.**

“Don’t try to bring me back,” Serenity says, and smiles, and slips into the ether. She’s never seen Serenity look happier.

 

**xiii.**

Spruce tilts her head, eyes wide with concern. “Is everything okay? There was a really terrible sobbing sound coming from the attic last night. Are the ghosts gone?”

Somehow, she manages a smile. 

“Yeah. I think things are going to be okay now.”


End file.
